Poetry By Carl “Papa” Palmer

An Ode to Her Candle

So many candles I’ve never burned.
A marriage candle,
two first communion candles from my kids,
a bicentennial candle,
millennium candle.
So many candles I’ve never burned.

Her candle I’ve burned for over twenty years,
not every day, but most every day.
A memory of what once was,
of what we had
me and her,
her candle.
Originally voluptuously large,
beautifully ornate,
burning bright hot and fast.
We were young then.

Gradually her candle grew old,
became hollow.
Most of the outside still holding fast,
dusty with age,
the wick long lost,
in darkness temporarily filled
with a tea light candle.
Certain songs, movies or moods
rekindle the freshness,
remind me of when her candle was new.

In the light of day reality blazes,
her candle actually an empty shell.
So hard to visualize as it once was,
as in last night’s memory.

Beginning to wonder,
continuing to wonder,
if, after all this time,
I shouldn’t just throw it out.
This foolish vigil,
this senseless old man,
end this memorial,
this ritual and move on.

But, as the room grows dark,
the many candles I’ve never burned
remain so.
A new tea light candle
and she is back.
We, me and her,
her candle
and my thoughts
of twenty years ago.

Poetry By Ghairo Daniels

SOMBRE NIGHT

dark silent night

crawling ludicrously slowly

a slug across cold tiles

umbra unfolds before embracing

naked skin

an observant thief with black socks

whose holes steal my thoughts

as they slither white sheets

the more he steals the faster they come

round and round

a big wheel at fun fair

high they dangle at an angle

will his pitch rolling eyes catch them tumbling ?

cathartic they swirl

then temporarily stop

listening to night raindrops

kissing corrugated roof

dripping sweat

a mongrel barks agitated

received no marrow bone in his bowl

fire eating amber gold chimera

chained both her wrist and mind

as black cotton catsuit

jigsaw edited shopping ailes

….. raw silent night process thoughts (…)

a silver Volvo manifested like a manifesto

in Cabral’s war journals

when he tried to free a corner of Africa

sketching guarded car between his poetry lines

in sombre silent night fish moths crawl

children hunger for one wheat roll —-

without yeast or a dab of strawberry jam

stomachs rumbling across Palestinian fields

a jet flies velvet sky

knows not limitless of sleeplessness

sequins on wall tapestry glitter old age

like sequences of novellas read, then analysed

for untied knots in buried psyches of

would be writers or neurotic drama queens

Sits sullen night on cold dusty sill

raw like a snake mackerel just caught

waiting to be slit with long silver blade

a catastrophic tower melts in far off furnace

blackness dissected in splinters

pupils dilated as ophthalmologist

held her microscope

peering at cataracts on lenses

cutaneous silent night !

crawls ludicrously

slowly s l o w l y

as sinister cat jumps

her raw paws across dimensions

of my skull

I see scribbled on coal sky —-

dog still barking…whilst scriptures sing opal

songs

s l o w l y

Poetry By Althea Dawn

The Fall

Beauty within the fall
hidden from the eyes
but seen by the empty soul
Somehow withering leaves
rising life
Unfolding story
of forgotten dreams
Another hope drifts
among the fallen leaves
in the silent voice of the wind
Flying

Poetry By Julia Vale

Precipitation

isolation missed
mountainous clouds in your eyes
rain of lonely drop

Poetry By REVEUR

The tomorrow of today

I don’t have anything to say,
So I’m writing it instead.
If it’s worth it, it’ll find its voice.

In recession and inflation,
In the invisible centre of attraction.
I’m at the edge of the light,
Standing at the cusp of day and night.
In the surroundings of distraction,
I can notice the leaves swinging with the wind,
but I can’t hear its sound.
Blocked by the window or my inner wound, yet to be found.

In the voice of the voiceless,
Particles of dust at the wooden shelf,
Pollution slowly taking over my pounding chest.
The pen and paperless life test,
I can feel the drench of sweat in my breast.

Food inflation, trade regression,
oil traffic congestion and capitalism at its core in a battle.
Spreading like fire in the heart of the cold,
And taken over the lives of the bold.
While a mother’s womb longs for hope,
Where a child could be lost before it’s born.

Damaged buildings, broken homes,
Empty kitchens, living in the dim.
Lingering on some sunshine and bread,
Snatched from the minds full of greed.
One end for Hunger strikes, and the other for fighter jet fights.
Human lives may still belong to God,
but the machines seem to have nowhere to stop.
So when I see a bird chirping outside,
teaching her offspring to fly,
Building a safe home for them before,
they learn how not to return to the same space again.
I realise how they survive the wild world.
No attachment no assurance.
No beginnings and no end.
This is where the soul power belongs.
Our power together,
Where we are not testing God at this hour,
we are testing our own spirit,
that will teach us to fly amidst the cusp of day and night.
Remind us, that while the body will perish,
pain will be buried below,
The soul will take its flight again and again,
until time’s possession over us.